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Outside contracts for special education students costing MUSD $440,000 this year

The increasing cost of providing special education services to nearly 1,000 of its 6,500-member student body has been ascribed as a reason for Moorpark Unified School District’s recently publicized financial difficulties.

So what are the reasons for the rising cost and why didn’t MUSD financial staff see them coming?

Across the state, more and more students are being referred for special needs assessments and qualifying for such services, Superintendent Kelli Hays said in an interview.

In MUSD, about 918 students are designated as “special needs,” a group that includes those who may have learning or psychological disabilities, emotional issues, or speech, hearing, visual or other health impairments.

These students are served by roughly 180 special education teachers, paraeducators, psychologists, therapists and office workers, Hays said.

The superintendent said the district holds Individualized Education Program meetings for special-needs students at least once a year to determine what help these students may need to meet their academic goals. The district’s special education department is responsible for determining whether or not a student is eligible for an IEP.

But Hays said the total cost of providing these special education services to students throughout the year cannot be “wholly predicted” until the IEPs take place.

“We have taken this very seriously,” Hays said of the budget problem publicized in February.

Over the year, Hays said, the school district has had to contract with outside agencies—including the Simi Valley and Conejo Valley school districts—to provide what MUSD cannot, such as programs for students who are autistic or emotionally troubled.

Those contracts have accounted for about $440,000 of the $1.2 million in additional expenses that forced MUSD to dip into its reserves, the superintendent said.

“We have a legal and moral obligation to educate these students just as we do with all our students,” Hays said, adding that she does not want special education youths and their parents to feel “targeted” by the district’s financial challenges.

Going forward, Hays said she wants the district to provide more training for the special education staff to help reduce the reliance on outside agencies. She also wants MUSD to join other districts throughout the state in calling for more funding for special ed.

Replenishing reserves

As of this week, the school district had just $750,000 in its emergency fund, leaving MUSD out of compliance with a state law that requires districts to keep at least 3 percent of their overall budget in their reserves. Moorpark’s reserves total about 1.2 percent.

In response, the Ventura County Office of Education has labeled Moorpark Unified’s budget as having “qualified certification,” meaning that based on current projections, the district may not meet its financial obligations over the next two fiscal years. It is the only school district in Ventura County currently labeled as such.

“Having a qualified budget is obviously something that’s disappointing for me and for the district,” Hays said. “However, it is a process. I think it’s important for people to know that this process really served its purpose in alerting us to areas where we need improved processes and procedures.”

In the short term, the district will replenish its reserves as part of its 2016-17 budget plan, taking money that would have otherwise gone to the general fund. Speaking long-term, Hays said, some staffing changes will need to be made.

Hays told the Acorn in March that the posts of about 10 teachers expected to leave the district next year will not be filled due to a decline in enrollment.

While the superintendent told MUSD staff and parents the district has no plans to hand out more pink slips to teachers, she expects 10 teachers to leave their posts next year, which won’t be filled. Although that could lead to larger class sizes next year, Hays said any increases would be small, as the district expects enrollment to drop by 140 students.

“We really have some lower class sizes that need to be addressed, and we are addressing those through (teacher) attrition,” Hays said.

With the district’s enrollment numbers continuing to slide, Hays said she will attempt to attract more students from neighboring districts by advertising in other cities about the schools and educational programs Moorpark has to offer.

By marketing Moorpark schools’ achievements—including students’ recent Common Core state standards test scores and the district’s plans to expand the college and career programs at the middle and high schools—Hays said, she hopes more families will be encouraged to enroll their children at MUSD.

*Editor's note: An earlier version of this story said MUSD meets with special-needs students "two to three times a year" regarding their Individualized Education Programs. While some students require that amount of frequency, the district, by law, only must hold one IEP meeting.

An earlier version also omitted the word "lower" from Superintendent Hays' comment regarding class sizes.

source : http://www.mpacorn.com/news/2016-04-01/Front_Page/Outside_contracts_for_special_ed_students_costing_.html

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Budget shortfall impacts Trenton's special education needs children | Editorial

Trenton's special-needs kids were impacted twice last week, with the news that budget cuts and scheduling conflicts will have an unwelcome impact on two venues that play an important role in their lives.

The Stokes Early Learning Center, a preschool serving regular and special-education students in the school district, will close its doors. Call it collateral damage from a $5.9 million shortfall in the school district's budget as dozens of teachers, paraprofessionals and secretaries receive lay-off notices.

Interim Superintendent Lucy Feria called the closure "very painful," citing struggling attendance as a reason and adding that the officials will reconsider the programs in the future.
Meanwhile, the Special Needs Community Resource Center, operating originally out of Monument Elementary School and then relocated to P.J. Hill Elementary School, has once again been displaced and forced to scramble for a new home.

The center's founder, Nicole Whitfield, received an e-mail from administration last Wednesday, notifying her that the district now needs the space the youngsters and their teachers have been occupying.

Whitfield created the program last year to address the individual needs of youngsters age 3 to 13 who had been classified with special needs.
Future unknown for after-school program
"We want to give them the stability, the environmental, physical and emotional stability that they need," said Sharlene Downing, a paraprofessional who signed on to teach at the program when it was launched last year.

"Stability" is hardly the word that comes to mind when the center is desperately seeking its third home in 18 months.

It's difficult not to find a grain of truth in Whitfield's complaint that "It seems like our special-needs kids are always hit when comes to budget cuts."
Parents, teachers and advocates say the greatest impact will be felt by the most vulnerable youngsters: the more than 2,000 students with individualized education plans (IEPs) which entitle them to services such as speech, occupational and physical therapy.

Certainly, any progress these vulnerable children have made is likely to come to a halt – or even be reversed – if these important services are withheld.
Trenton to layoff staff, close school
What makes the situation taste even more bitter is that Whitfield and her crew are offering their services free of charge.

"We haven't asked them for one penny," the activist told NJ Advance Media after hearing the disheartening news. "All we asked for was space so we could provide after-school programming."
Slashing education funding harms students across the board, but it invariably hits special-needs kids and their families the hardest, creating yet another obstacle to overcome.
Let's hope the district's financial folks keep that in mind as they go about tweaking the numbers.

source:http://www.nj.com/opinion/index.ssf/2016/03/budget_shortfall_impacts_trentons_special_needs_ch.html

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Smarter Balanced test changes affect California special Education students

California education officials have made significant changes to the way hundreds of thousands of special education students take the state's standardized tests. But the modifications have some teachers and parents worried about whether they'll help students. 

“We found some areas that we wanted to improve,” said Keric Ashley, Deputy Superintendent at the California Department of Education.
The changes have to do with the more than two dozen tools available to educators to help special education students take the test. These tools include reading questions aloud, giving frequent breaks, and changing the color of the computer screen to allow a student to see the questions easier.
This year the Smarter Balanced test will allow students to control the volume and pitch on the computer program that reads a question to a student and that reads glossary words related to questions on the test. The test will also now provide Spanish language glossaries to help students who have a disability and who are classified as English Learners.

“What we learned is that accommodations may work for a vast majority of special education students,” Ashley said. “But, like we heard with the text-to-speech changes that we made for some special education students, things didn’t quite work as well as we might have hoped that they would.”
Special education students who take the Smarter Balanced tests typically have disabilities such as autism and other impairments that don’t severely effect a student’s ability to learn. Students with more severe disabilities take other standardized tests instead. Parents have the choice to opt out of the test taking, while the school staff that draws up a student’s Individualized Education Plan can also choose to exempt a student from taking standardized tests.
School staff are busy the next few weeks uploading the accommodations for special education students.

Some teachers are worried that the changes will remove the personal touch that has eased special education students’ test taking anxiety in the past.
Marshall High School resource teacher Mike Finn said he has concerns about several of the new accommodations.

The way the new changes have been explained to him, special students who have the text to speech accommodation have to use it for every question. Automating some accommodations, he said, like having a computer read the student a question eliminates the human touch, and therefore the ability of a teacher to calm a special ed student during testing.

“And the kid is going to put on the headphones and listen to the test while he’s reading along with on the screen," Finn said. "That’s a big change and it sort of robs us of our ability to nuance that."
That’s not good for the student because “what a lot of these accommodations and modifications are doing, from my point of view as an educator, is lowering the student’s test anxiety,” he said.
The wrinkle is that parents and school officials make individual decisions for each special education student. That’s why some psychologists are recommending parents of special education students advocate for their child when the test-taking decisions are made.

Federal law requires special education students to take standardized tests. The state’s change this year to how it gives the test to this population signals how the state is balancing that requirement with the learning and emotional needs of those students.
Parents of special education students are torn about whether to opt their students out of the Smarter Balanced tests.

“The fact that they’re asked to do the testing, I think it’s too much,” said Janae Ellis, the mother of an 11th grade boy with autism who’s set to take the Smarter Balanced test in the next few weeks at Palm Springs High School. She opted him out of state tests in the early grades. When he has taken tests he’s had longer time to take it and has had questions read aloud.

“My son especially suffers from anxiety, greatly," she said. "It’s hard enough for them to get to school and deal with their issues of whatever their personal disability issue is.”
Now though, she has a lot of confidence in the staff at her son’s school and that led her to give the OK for him to take the test in the next few weeks. But she has not talked to the staff at her school about the accommodations that will be made for him.
Child psychologists urge parents to be more proactive.

“The kids that seem to really have the system work for them, are the kids that have the really savvy or aggressive parents,” said child psychologist Michelle Matusoff. "The parents who know the system, know their rights, know all about the accommodations they’re eligible for and they insist that these things are implemented, the others just kind of fall by the wayside.”
Child psychologist Michelle has several recommendations for parents of kids with disabilities scheduled to take the standardized tests.

• Be familiar with your child’s test taking accommodations
• Make sure that the testing accommodations agreed to are being implemented
• Use online resources and books that spell out special education laws and tests

She urges kids who have anxiety before and during a test to be aware of their thoughts, think about what feelings they are having and control their breathing.
State officials said more changes to special education accommodations are likely after this spring’s Smarter Balanced tests.

“We do have our independent evaluation in place,” the CDE’s Ashley said. “We have a couple of different companies looking at these results and looking specifically at how accommodations are used and how supports are used to see how we can improve in the future.”

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Watertown Public Schools audit finds soaring special education costs

Watertown Public Schools need to decrease turnover in it’s Special Education leadership, decrease out of district expenditures, and foster better communication between the superintendent and town manager, according third party review released earlier this week.

RSM consulting presented its third party review of the general and special education budgets to the Town Council and School Committee Monday. The review included 29 recommendations outlined for the next three years. As part of the process RSM reviewed the School Department’s FY 2014 and 2015 operational budgets, reviewed other general and special education documents, and conducted more than 50 interviews with stakeholders including department staff and leadership and elected officials.

Craig Finley, consulting manager for RSM, said that one thing RSM found during the process was a strong level of confidence through the department in the schools leadership.

“The biggest thing we found here was the strong support of the schools, and that’s important,” Finley said. “In discussions, right down to the faculty level, [the] belief and understanding in Dr. Fitzgerald’s ability to lead the schools came through over and over again.”

Finley also said that it was also apparent throughout RSM’s time in Watertown that there was collaboration between faculty and staff, and that the schools adequately provided information to the town.

“As we went through this evaluating process one of the areas that we focused on is looking at opportunities for the town and the school to collaborate further, and opportunities to allow for sharing of resources between both entities,” Finley said.

Finley said RSM found that Watertown School suffered from “organizational ambiguity” and that further collaboration and shared resources between the schools and town was necessary. RSM also highlighted the need for better consistency of the school business manager and administrator of special education positions.

“When you look back at Watertown’s progress, in both cases those positions have been moved in and out on far too rapid of a basis,” Finley said. “To retain key staff members, especially in those positions, are critical to the success going forward for Watertown.”

The study noted per-pupil costs at the schools were elevated to the way the school budgets for professional development.

“It’s falsely inflating per pupil costs by noting money that’s in already in the account,” Finley said.

Finley also noted that the town manager and superintendent didn’t meet as much as they would have expected.

“We’ve had good conversations on both sides,” Finley said. “They’re both [willing] to make sure that there’s continued ongoing conversation between both parties to make sure that there’s a mutual understanding and collaboration in making the schools a successful place for students to come and learn everyday.”

source:http://watertown.wickedlocal.com/article/20160325/NEWS/160327089 

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Parents Claim Special Education Teacher Hit 6-Year-Old Student

A Moore elementary teacher is under investigation for an incident involving an elementary school student, and the 6-year-old's parents said they're scared to take their son back to school.

Since it is an open investigation, the district has not released much, but the student's parents said the teacher hit their child and needs to be permanently removed from the classroom.

Nathan is a 6-year-old who quickly makes any cellphone he finds play his favorite songs. Music is a key form of communication for Nathan who is unable to speak due to developmental delays from his epilepsy.

“He's non-verbal. He doesn't speak at all,” his mother Stacey Felix said.

His parents believe that limitation is what kept Nathan from telling them what happened earlier this month in his special education class at Fisher Elementary. Instead, they learned of the alleged incident from the school's principal.

“One of the teachers in the room reported that the primary teacher struck him on the head with a baking pan or cookie sheet. Nathan reached for something that didn't belong to him and she just popped him on the head with it,” she said.

Both Nathan and the teacher in question are no longer at school.

The district released the following statement: "The teacher is currently on administrative leave pending the outcome of the investigation regarding an incident that happened in the classroom."

“You just kind of  entrust your child with somebody that you don't know and you hope for the best. Once that trust is broken it's over with. You cannot go back,” said Alex Smith, Nathan’s father.

Nathan's parents are now scrambling to find their son another special education program, but building their trust for a new teacher will take some time.

“This is like the worst nightmare we've talked about this before. We just never thought that it would be this way with a teacher that gets so much training,” Felix said.

Pending the outcome of the investigation, the parents said they would consider pressing charges against the teacher.

source:  http://www.news9.com/story/31542156/parents-claim-special-education-teacher-hit-6-year-old-student

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